On February 16, the International Table Tennis Federation officially announced the list of athletes for the first WTT Grand Slam Tournament, and unlike in the past, the doubles list of the Chinese team seems to be more eye-catching than singles, because each association has only 1 place in 3 doubles events (transnational combinations are counted separately), so many people think:
Who can be selected for the Chinese team is the potential main player for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
So which 3 pairs of pairs of national table tennis have been sent to participate in this time? Mixed Doubles: Wang Chuqin / Sun Yingsha; Men's Doubles: Fan Zhendong / Wang Chuqin; Women's Doubles: Sun Yingsha / Wang Manyu - Many fans say bluntly: Liu Guoliang and the coaching staff's new Olympic layout has surfaced! So will this really be the case in 2024? Will the veterans in the team end the curtain collectively?
This is what this article is about.
As we all know, the national table tennis lineup of the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games is obviously a bit "older": before that, the Chinese table tennis team rarely sent athletes over 30 years old to the Olympic games, but the Battle of Tokyo had Ma Long, Xu Xin, Liu Shiwen 3 veterans on the field, not only they were over 30 years old, but the oldest Ma Long was 32 years old at the time.
If it were not for Liu Shiwen's abandonment of the women's team duel, then the Olympic lineup of the national table tennis team would be half veterans, plus Chen Meng (born in 1994, who was already 27 years old at the time), which is also quite old, which is in contrast with the Japanese team next door with a clear trend of rejuvenation.
Note: Among the six main players of the Japanese team at that time, Ito Mimachi and Hirano Miyu were born in 2000, Tomokazu Chang was born in 2003, Takashi Niwa was born in 1994, and Yoshinori Ishikawa was born in 1993; only Mizutani Hayabusa was older, born in 1989, but also younger than Malone.
Shortly after the end of the Tokyo Olympic Games, Ma Long, Xu Xin and Liu Shiwen voluntarily withdrew from the competition of the Houston World Table Tennis Championships, and the replacement of new and old in the team was also significantly accelerated, so the lineup of the national table tennis 2024 Paris Olympic Games became a hot topic of discussion.
Since the Olympic Games only have a doubles event such as mixed doubles, Wang Chuqin/Sun Yingsha, who won the World Table Tennis Championship last year and was selected for the mixed doubles list of the Grand Slam this time, will undoubtedly be the best candidate to replace Xu Xin/Liu Shiwen.
Of course, if we look at it more broadly, we will find that in recent years, Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha and Wang Manyu have cooperated with mixed doubles, and Sun Yingsha and Xu Xin and Wang Chuqin have achieved good results in mixed doubles, which will become an important basis for the two to impact the mixed doubles event of the Paris Olympic Games.
What's more, Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha are still post-00s, and Sun Yingsha already has Olympic experience (Wang Chuqin is a substitute and did not play), which is naturally more valued.
According to the rules of the Olympic Games, the players who participate in the mixed doubles will inevitably register for the group at least, so the mixed doubles ability of Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha can at least give them an advantage in the competition of the two Olympic sports, which is a fact that cannot be ignored.
As for the men's doubles and women's doubles, although they are not Olympic individual events, they are the first set of team matches, so the same is at stake.
Friends who pay attention to table tennis know that in recent years, although the foreign association team can occasionally upset the Chinese team in singles, it is difficult to laugh to the end, but the doubles results have developed by leaps and bounds, so they are trying to break through the national table tennis defense line in this link, which also forces the national table tennis team to consolidate and strengthen the strength of these two projects.
Judging from the doubles results in recent years, Sun Yingsha / Wang Manyu is undoubtedly the women's doubles ace of national table tennis, and the men's doubles has declined significantly since Xu Xin faded out of the line, but considering Fan Zhendong's core position, then whoever matches him will have more opportunities to impact the World Series, of course, including the Olympic Games, and Wang Chuqin's left-handed advantage will become more and more obvious.
From the perspective of the veteran, the possibility of Ma Long, Xu Xin and Liu Shiwen playing in the Paris Olympics again is already very small, and Chen Meng will turn 30 by 2024, plus her recent state is indeed up and down, so there is indeed a possibility of being impacted by younger youngsters.
In summary, in the next two years, Fan Zhendong, Wang Chuqin, Sun Yingsha, and Wang Manyu will have more and more consolidated positions if they have no major injuries or foreign war mistakes: they are younger and less injured than veterans; they have more outstanding achievements and richer experience than other peers and juniors.
At present, there are two factors that are not certain about the national table tennis Paris Olympic lineup:
One is Chen Meng, and the other is the 2023 World Table Tennis Championships.
Chen Meng is a two-time defending champion at the Tokyo Olympics and an athlete between the veteran and the newcomer. Considering that the national table tennis has always had the tradition of "taking the old with the new", she may still be entrusted with a heavy responsibility in 2024 - although she was 30 years old at that time, she was also younger than Ma Long, Xu Xin and Liu Shiwen in 2021, wasn't it?
As for the status of the 2023 World Table Tennis Championships, it is self-evident: the national table tennis has always paid attention to the results of the World Table Tennis Championships in the year before the Olympic Games, especially singles. So far, with the exception of The Women's Singles Champion He Zhili of the year before the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the remaining singles champions who meet this condition have qualified for the next year's Olympic Games.
Note: Liu Shiwen's situation is also more special, she is indeed the most recent Women's Singles Champion of the World Table Tennis Championships before the Olympic Games, but it is two years away from the Olympic Games, so it is not within the scope of discussion, and she only did not participate in singles in the end, mixed doubles normal participation, and the team was withdrawn from the competition in an unexpected situation.
Therefore, for both Liu Guoliang and the coaching staff, THE ST's World Table Tennis Championships singles champion is at least an important candidate for the Olympic team event. But at present, it seems that the results of next year's World Table Tennis Championships will be difficult to change the current status of Fan Zhendong, Wang Chuqin, Sun Yingsha and Wang Manyu, hoping that these 4 people can maintain stable results, and also look forward to others' ability to compete for tickets to the Paris Olympic Games.
So which athletes are you optimistic about competing in the 2024 Olympic Games? Feel free to leave a message and write your own guesses and reasons!